The restaurant was full of the lunch crowd, which made the corner booth the quietest place in the capital for two people who did not want to be heard.
Anyone glancing over saw a man working through noodles across from a black-haired woman who was not really eating.
The owner had decided they were unusually polite customers, which was as close as he was ever going to come to knowing that the two travelers in his corner booth were agents of the Underworld King.
"So?" the man asked without lifting his eyes from the bowl, "did you finish your part?"
She put one leg over the other.
"Of course I did," she said, sounding insulted by the question, "I found what we needed."
He set the chopsticks down and gave her the attention she had been waiting for.
"You did?" he asked, with enough caution in it to be worth something.
"Yeah," she said, spearing the meat, "someone useless, petty, emotional, eager to take borrowed power the moment it gets offered."
